>Deron re-posted some rankings which showed Maine doing "well".
>
>Am I wrong in interpreting our present situation as follows:
>
>The ONLY way Maine makes it to the national tournament is to win the Hockey
>East postseason playoffs.   The likelihood of an at-large berth is
>virtually nil, due to their regular-season record.
>
>No criticism of their good performance during the year, but I fear it was
>not good enough for a bid by the committee in the absence of the HE
>postseason win.  Not as bad as Prairie View getting in with a postseason
>tournament win...
 
As those of you that watch Hockey-L know, the bids in D-I college hockey
are given out totally mechanically.  If you win your conference regular
season or postseason tournament, then you are in.  These 4-8 teams are
joined by 8-4 teams as measured by something that approximates PWR or
RPI (or HEAL for that matter).  So, to be on the bubble, one really
needs to be in the top quarter of all (44) eligible teams.  Even to be
considered, one needs to have a winning record (Maine's NCAA tournament
record is now 12-13-4).
 
So, if we lose to UNH, our favorite team is mathematically out of the
NCAAs.  If we win (either 2-0 or 2-1), then we jump into the about
20-team group that the NCAA consider for the 12-team tournament by
virtue of a .500 record.
 
So the question becomes, can 2 UNH plus a BC victory get us into the top
10?  I don't think so.  It gets us close to, say, Northeastern but with
still 4-6 teams in front of us for that last bid.
 
IMHO, the HockeyEast tournament will be the last games for us this
season, barring a miracle tournament championship.
 
I did miss one other possibility: if Superman zooms around the world
enough for time to go back to last year and convince Jeff Libby to play
one more season for our favorite team ...  then we contend for
everything!  :-) Otherwise, there are 4 HockeyEast teams arguably better
than us.
 
Btw ... Steve Kariya has been OKed to play Friday night! Get 'em Steve!
 
cheers,
 
Wayne T. Smith          Systems Group -- UNET Technology Services
[log in to unmask]           University of Maine System
Co-owner of the College Hockey lists - Hockey-L/Info-Hockey-L/Hockey3